Mayo Clinic

It’s day 1 at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, and as the day progressed, new major themes emerged: What does the morning’s dealmaking tell us about biopharma’s recovery? And how will the incoming Trump administration shape what’s next for the industry? Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and ARCH Venture Partners co-founder Bob Nelsen, for example, both signaled at the Endpoints at #JPM25 event that there could be a friendly regulatory and innovation environment for the industry under the new administration — with Nelsen in particular celebrating the departure of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. “I think we need a stirring,” Nelsen said. But both note there could be hits to vaccine confidence if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gets his way. Gottlieb is especially worried. “I’ve been very clear I don’t think he should be health secretary,” he said. This morning had three early announcements: GSK will acquire the privately-held biotech IDRx for $1 billion upfront; Lilly is buying cancer startup Scorpion Therapeutics; and J&J will acquire Intra-Cellular Therapies. Join us on Tuesday for another live blog detailing everything you need to know about biopharma’s most influential week. Expect more shareholder activism in 2025 (1:30 pm PT): Increased M&A activity could mean more shareholder activism in 2025, experts said on stage during the Endpoints at #JPM25 event. David Rosewater, a managing director at Morgan Stanley, said that because activists often ask for parts or all of a business to be sold, then a ripe deal environment invites more calls for change.”There is a fair amount of activity going on that hasn’t yet hit the public,” Rosewater said. Lina Tetelbaum, corporate partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, said industry watchers should keep an eye on the rate of settlements. Because the deal environment is expected to be more favorable, activists could return to companies that they did not fully press on and more forcefully call for changes, she said. — Max Bayer Nelsen raises a glass to outgoing officials (11:45 am PT): ARCH Venture Partners co-founder Bob Nelsen thinks the next few months under the Trump administration will be good for the biopharma industry. He stopped short of saying he supports President-elect Donald Trump — and wouldn’t say directly if he is against HHS nominee RFK Jr. — but he said he’s in favor of a “good housecleaning.” “Throwing some rocks and stirring it up is a net good,” he said on stage at the Endpoints at #JPM25 event. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be a lot of drama and maybe some bad things that come out of it.” Nelsen said he’s particularly looking forward to some former administrative officials moving on. “Having Lina Khan and all these people move on — great. I’m having a few shots of tequila to celebrate that.” — Nicole Wetsman Gottlieb is worried about vaccines (11:30 am PT): Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb continued to lobby against the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of HHS onstage at the Endpoints at #JPM25 event, saying the country cannot afford to further erode confidence in vaccines. Gottlieb believes that a single-digit percentage drop in uptake of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in areas around the country could lead to wider outbreaks.”That would be tragic,” Gottlieb said. — Max Bayer Pfizer wants to stay ahead of China (10:15 am PT): Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said at JPM that “China is growing faster and faster, and we should not let them take the lead.” In recent months, multiple biotech startups have been propped up by assets in-licensed from China, and companies like Merck and BioNTech have acquired drugs from Chinese biopharmas. Bourla said Pfizer will invest in innovation to keep up. “Those are the two fundamentals, innovation and pace.” — Kyle LaHucik FDA is more comfortable with CAR-T (9:55 am PT): Peter Marks said Monday at an Alliance for Regenerative Medicine event the the FDA feels “reassured” about the secondary cancer risk related to CAR-T therapies after looking at the safety data, and the regulatory agency plans to “refine the warnings that we made last year.” Marks said the secondary blood cancer cases came from a combination of a “very small” signal from CAR-T and a background rate of secondary cancer cases in the patients. — Lei Lei Wu Tokat is optimistic about deals so far (9:45 am PT): Centerview’s co-president of investment banking Eric Tokat isn’t as pessimistic about the dealmaking landscape as some colleagues. “I do believe today’s deals are a sign that hopefully ’25 will be in a good start and will continue this way,” he said on the Endpoints at #JPM25 stage. — Nicole Wetsman IDRx considered an IPO (9:35 am PT): It turns out IDRx did run a dual-track process considering both an IPO and a buyout. IDRx chair Ben Auspitz told Endpoints’ Kyle LaHucik that the road to an acquisition by GSK was “highly competitive” with “multiple suitors” in the mix. — Jaimy Lee Xaria is still tight lipped on targets (9:10 am PT): During a talk at the Endpoints at #JPM25 event, Xaira CEO Marc Tessier-Lavigne provided a peek behind the curtain at what’s next for the billion-dollar AI biotech. He said they’re building the next versions of RFdiffusion and RFantibody, leading AI models originally out of David Baker ‘s lab. The goal is to tackle hard-to-drug targets, with Tessier-Lavigne specifically mentioning multipass membrane proteins as an opportunity.”That requires better algorithms, more compute, and also more data,” he said. “We’re on that path.” Xaira’s pipeline, though, remains tightly under wraps: Tessier-Lavigne declined to divulge specific targets or a timeline to reaching the clinic. — Andrew Dunn A nonprofit is focusing on East Asian American leaders ( 9:05 am PT): A group of biotech investors and repeat entrepreneurs formed a nonprofit focused on getting more East Asian American leaders into the C-suite. Dubbed ElevAAte , its board includes Architect Therapeutics CEO Angie You , TCGX founder Chen Yu and C andid Therapeutics CEO Ken Song . According to the nonprofit, East Asian Americans comprise 6% of board seats and 7% of C-suite roles among a sample of 181 publicly-traded biopharmas based in the US. That’s compared to Asian Americans holding 25% of the industry’s professional entry-level positions. — Kyle LaHucik There’s skepticism around the deal signal (8:35 am PT): Despite a flurry of dealmaking on Monday, biotech investor Brad Loncar took to X to say he doesn’t think the morning’s deals say much about the end of the biotech slump. He wrote that J&J ‘s acquisition of Intra-Cellular Therapies is “nice,” but he expects investor concern about the future of Moderna and Regeneron . Mirador Therapeutics CEO Mark McKenna echoed that sentiment from the Endpoints at #JPM25 stage. “I would not look at the one deal with J&J and say we’re in the clear,” he said. The XBI $XBI , the closely-watched biotech index, was down about 2% on Monday morning. — Jaimy Lee The Uber app in SF is on-brand (8:25 am PT): Anyone else noting the on-point banking ads in the Uber app targeting healthcare investors? So far, as I’ve waited (and waited and waited) for a car, I’ve seen ads for Mizuho, HSBC Innovation Banking , and Bridge Bank ’s life science group. Even a CRO — Novotech — showed up. — Jaimy Lee IPOs vs buyouts (7:35 am PT): Are Monday’s Scorpion Therapeutics and IDRx buyouts a sign that IPOs are still tough to get done? Or did those companies run dual-track processes that garnered enough pharma interest to beat out the prospects of a Nasdaq debut? The cancer startups — which were founded in 2020 and 2021, respectively — each raised more than $100 million over the summer and are already in the clinic. That’s the type of profile that public market investors have sought out during the last two years of IPOs. — Kyle LaHucik Lilly buys Scorpion (7:00 am PT): Eli Lilly joined the conference’s early dealmaking frenzy with an up to $2.5 billion purchase of cancer biotech Scorpion Therapeutics . The startup shares the same founder as Loxo Oncology , which formed the basis for Lilly’s oncology pipeline via an $8 billion buyout five years ago around this time. — Kyle LaHucik Nvidia is still pushing into healthcare (6:00 am PT): Nvidia will present in the Westin this morning at 9:45 am PT. The chip giant just announced new partnerships with some heavy hitters in healthcare: Iqvia , the Arc Institute , Illumina and the Mayo Clinic . Details are limited on each of those tie-ups, but it’s the latest reminder of the mutual interest between Nvidia and the healthcare industry. Last we heard, the company’s revenue stream from healthcare was over $1 billion — we’ll be watching for any update on that number. One other number to further explain Nvidia’s day 1 presence at JPM, despite not being a healthcare company: $3.32 trillion. That’s its market cap, which is nearly twice as much as the other 17 companies — combined — presenting Monday in JPM’s two biggest rooms. — Andrew Dunn J&J makes a move (5:30 am PT): And it’s official — Johnson & Johnson is acquiring Intra-Cellular Therapies for $14.6 billion. It’s the biggest biotech M&A transaction since 2023. J&J presents at the Westin this morning. — Nicole Wetsman Hello from San Francisco (4:00 am PT): Good morning from JPM! Today is the first official day of the 2025 conference, but executives (and Endpoints staff) have been trickling into San Francisco all weekend — along with news. ICYMI, on Sunday, the leadership of gene editing startup Tune Therapeutics exclusively told Endpoints News that they’ve raised $175 million in a Series B. And don’t miss the Endpoints at #JPM25 event, which kicks off at 8 am PT with an interview with Xaira CEO Marc Tessier-Lavigne . Check out the rest of the agenda , and register for free to watch the live stream. — Nicole Wetsman Deal rumors circulate (4:00 am PT): When it comes to dealmaking, it’s a will-they-or-won’t-they kind of moment. So far, GSK has announced it’s buying IDRx for $1 billion upfront, and Biogen put in an offer to buy its partner Sage Therapeutics . J&J is also reportedly considering an acquisition of Intra-Cellular Therapies . But it’s still far too soon to say whether the industry’s sputtering recovery and record-low dealmaking will come to an end in 2025. — Jaimy Lee JPM isn’t the only meeting that matters (4:00 am PT): The Jefferies healthcare conference in London has been vying for the spotlight over the years, and it’s starting to close the gap. “Jefferies in London became so big (basically got to see most of the people already), so I am skipping JPM this year,” Forbion general partner Wouter Joustra told Endpoints. It’s a notable remark from a leader of the Dutch investment firm, which had a breakout year in 2024. That said, his team isn’t totally foregoing the event in San Francisco. — Kyle LaHucik

On Monday, AI development powerhouse Nvidia kicked off this year’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco by announcing new partnerships focused on scaling AI models across healthcare. One of Nvidia’s new partnerships is with Mayo Clinic — the collaboration seeks to accelerate the development of pathology foundation models. Mayo Clinic’s digital pathology platform houses 20 million whole-slide images, as well as 10 million associated patient records. To quicken the pace of foundation model development on this platform, the health system will deploy Nvidia’s DGX Blackwell AI systems, as well as Monai, the company’s healthcare imaging platform. Sponsored Post The Funding Model for Cancer Innovation is Broken — We Can Fix It Closing cancer health equity gaps require medical breakthroughs made possible by new funding approaches. By Eve McDavid - CEO of Mission-Driven Tech “Our ultimate goal is to create a human digital twin. This is a dynamic digital representation, including medical imaging, pathology, health records and wearables. To achieve this, Mayo Clinic and Nvidia will leverage some of the latest AI models and vision language models like Cosmos Nemotron and our microservices, and this collaboration will be a cornerstone for new applications in drug discovery and diagnostic medicine,” said Kimberly Powell, vice president and general manager of healthcare at Nvidia, during a press briefing. Another one of Nvidia’s partnerships is with IQVIA, a life sciences analytics and clinical research firm. The firm will leverage Nvidia’s AI foundry service to create foundation models — with the ultimate goal of deploying AI agents to IQVIA’s more than 10,000 customers across healthcare and life sciences, Powell noted. “IQVIA has a really rich and unique dataset of 64 petabytes of proprietary data that’s representing over a billion unique and anonymized patients from 100 different countries,” she pointed out. presented by Health IT Transforming Patient Care: The Role of AI-Powered Assistants The progress in artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping patient care, across various dimensions, from facilitating faster discharge to curating treatment plans and suggesting lifestyle changes. By IT Medical Nvidia’s AI foundry service includes models, software and expert services to help organizations create and deploy AI tools. By using Nvidia’s AI foundry, IQVIA will be able to develop AI agents more quickly, Powell remarked. She highlighted AI agents — which are AI models that complete specific tasks without human intervention — as an important area taking off within the greater AI field. “Agent AI cannot only perceive, but it can reason, plan and even take action,” Powell declared. On the biopharma side of things, Nvidia is teaming up with DNA sequencing powerhouse Illumina. Illumina will use Nvidia’s computing and AI toolsets to augment its multiomics analysis technology — which analyzes data from the genome, transcriptome, proteome, epigenome, metabolome microbiome to advance drug discovery and precision medicine. This will enable Illumina to create foundation models that will “unlock the next generation of genomics insights,” Powell remarked. “We’re going to unlock new markets for genomics by making genomics insights — not just the data, but the insights — much more accessible and impactful, driving significant advancements in disease research and drug discovery,” she stated. The final partnership Nvidia announced on Monday was also in the biopharma space. The company is collaborating with Arc Institute, a research organization focusing on biology and machine learning, to develop AI tools to advance biomedical discovery. Arc’s researchers are working with Nvidia’s engineers to build and scale foundation models that can be generalized across various modalities within biology, such as DNA, RNA and proteins. “Our partnership is going to focus on developing true foundation models for biology using Nvidia BioNeMo and DGX Cloud. All of our resulting work is going to be shared and contributed back to the open source in BioNeMo so we can truly democratize large scale biomedical research,” Powell declared. She said Nvidia hopes to be “actively announcing the outputs” of these collaborations throughout the rest of the year. Credit: MR.Cole_Photographer, Getty Images

NVIDIA is the world’s most valuable company with a market cap of $3.33tn. Image credit: Shutterstock / JHVEPhoto. In moves that continue to strengthen its affiliation with the healthcare industry, NVIDIA has added three new companies to its growing list of AI-based partnerships. The tech company has partnered with clinical research services company IQVIA, genomics specialist Illumina, and Mayo Clinic. Along with a collaboration with research organisation Arc Institute, the collaborations were announced during the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference on 13 January. Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company with a market cap of $3.33tn, has expanded its presence in the healthcare sector over the past few years. The company states that AI, accelerated computing and biological data coming together is “turning healthcare into the largest technology industry”. A 2023 report by GlobalData predicts that global revenue for AI platforms across healthcare will reach $18.8bn by 2027, with Nvidia’s technological advancements in the field a key reason for the market’s growth. The newly announced partnerships are the first of 2025 as the tech company looks ahead to a year when it could see its share price soar even higher. IQVIA will use Nvidia’s AI Foundry – a service that allows companies to build custom generative AI models – to create new solutions in clinical research workflows. IQVIA is also developing agentic AI solutions kitted out with Nvidia’s NIM and Blueprints software that will expedite research and clinical development. Agentic AI perceive, reason, and act within complex and multi-step tasks, and have been referred to as “digital employees”. During a press briefing ahead of the conference, Nvidia’s healthcare vice president Kimberly Powell said: “Initially, we’re going to focus on clinical trials. This is the longest, most expensive workflow and drug and medical device development, our partnership will accelerate trial execution while significantly reducing administrative version burden through the deployment of agents of all kinds.” The partnership with Illumina aims to harness next-generation genomics to enhance drug discovery and human health. As part of the deal, Illumina will use Nvidia’s accelerated computing and AI toolsets for multiomics analysis and workflows. Illumina expanded its reach in the multiomics space with the acquisition of Fluent BioSciences and its single-cell research technology in July 2024. Nvidia said that its technology on Illumina’s platforms will help make analysis and insights of the human genome more accessible to life science researchers and pharmaceutical companies. Illumina’s chief technology officer Steve Barnard said: “By combining Illumina’s expertise in genomics data and analysis with Nvidia’s powerful AI platforms, we aim to enable pharma and biotech companies to unlock their own multiomics data to uncover transformative insights and improve success rates in developing life-saving therapies.” The collaboration with the Mayo Clinic aims to progress digital pathology – a field which has transformed disease diagnosis by speeding up and improving histological slide analysis. Mayo Clinic has built a platform using robotic scanning that has a created dataset of 20 million whole-slide images with ten million patient-associated records. The medical centre will deploy Nvidia’s Blackwell chip and imaging platform MONAI to handle the datasets. Powell said in the briefing: “Our ultimate goal is to create a human digital twin – this is a dynamic digital representation, including medical imaging, pathology, health records, wearables…and this collaboration will be a cornerstone for new applications in drug discovery and diagnostic medicine.” Nvidia now has over 3,500 healthcare members in its Inception programme, a free framework offered by the company to nurture startups and support co-marketing opportunities. Members of the ecosystem come from market segments such as digital health, surgical robotics, imaging, and biopharma, among others. “We’ve added over 1,300 [members] just last year,” Powell said. “[Healthcare] is the singular, largest industry in the inception programme. Healthcare is a $10trn industry with over 30% of operating expenses dedicated to meeting the growing demand. To address this challenge, we need AI solutions of all kinds.”